How Ben Affleck Found Out About Jennifer Garner's 'Vanity Fair' Profile

15/03/2016 8:00:13 AM

​"She's allowed to talk about it…"​

Three weeks ago, Jennifer Garner broke her silence on her divorce from Ben Affleck, with a full Vanity Fair cover story devoted to their breakup.

Jen talked very candidly about Nannygate, her heartbreak, and her feelings for Ben now. ("He's the love of my life," she said at one point. "I always say, 'When his sun shines on you, you feel it.' But when the sun is shining elsewhere, it's cold. He can cast quite a shadow.")

The New York Times interviewed Ben the day after the Vanity Fair piece dropped and while he wasn't keen about talking about his private life—"because it ends up being in the record somewhere, in the great miasma of junk on the Internet"—he did admit he knew about the piece before it was published.

"[Jen] felt like she wanted to discuss it and get it out there and get it over with," Ben explained, "so she could say, 'Look, I already talked about it—I don't want to do it again.' It's fine. She's allowed to talk about it."

The pair really are, as Jennifer told Vanity Fair herself, doing fine. When asked by the reporter if Jennifer speaking out about their split made it impossible for him to maintain his silence, he responded with a compliment to his ex-wife: "Jen's great. She's a great person. We're on great terms. I just saw her this morning, so that's the reality that I live in."